In 2019, Rapid Circle hired Support Engineers in RUN team to monitor its customers’ cloud environment round-the-clock. RUN team is responsible to deliver Managed Services which includes 24/7 monitoring of the cloud environment, incident and change management, continuous monitoring of security threats etc.  

The Support Engineers were given trainings on a Ticket Management tool, monitoring different cloud environments, handling first line of support, co-ordination with team during Critical Situation (CRITSIT) etc. They were also encouraged to explore other Microsoft technologies with the intention to upgrade their skills. 

Here’s the story of Krishna Yele who started as Support Engineer and is now a working as Cloud Consultant.

What did you do before joining Rapid Circle?  
I was preparing for my higher education through Gate/GRE, initially I was heavily invested in the preparations, even though I passed the exams with a fairly good rank, I took upon to go to a better college in next try, while preparing for the next try I had tried freelancing and created some products for my local area. Luckily, I got a good college in Germany, however the Visa got delayed and my ambition to study further got delayed by 6 months. 

“I am very fortunate to have been surrounded by great teammates, right from the day of joining the RC.”

Krishna Yele

How did you land up in Rapid Circle?  
I still remember that on 14 October 2019, the Embassy said your visa was still in progress, my plans were deferred by next 6 months, that’s when I started looking for jobs. With two years of gap, I knew it wasn’t going to be an easy ride. After almost 2 months of job hunt in Pune, I decided to go back home on 19 Dec and on the same day, I got a call from my classmate about a job opening at Rapid Circle and that the interview was scheduled on 19th itself! I had to cancel my tickets as I got the job. 

I remember my first day in RC, everyone was in a party mood since entire company was going on Core Leaves (last week of December) but I was nervous (being my first day at office). I was addressing everyone by sir/madam but then Suyog shook my hand and says “No Sir/Ma’am here”, which comforted me a lot. And rest of the day I enjoyed the party. 

What did you do in RUN team? 
As a Support Engineer, my role was monitoring the status of Azure Resources and Tickets in TOPdesk. That included monitoring the alerts coming on mail, proactively looking for potential failure on Azure Dashboard and handling client calls when they faced issue. I was the organiser and coordinator of team during CRITSIT (Critical Situation) events. I was responsible for prioritizing the severity and identifying the cause of the issue. The role included to create monthly reports for all the issues that occurred at clients’ side. It was an opportunity of creating a Power Automate for a client that got me intrigued about this powerful technology. I also got opportunities in creating Apps for many internal projects/events. 

What did you learn in RUN team? 
As we had monitoring and reporting responsibilities, it was essential to know the workings and basics of Azure services that we handled for the client. I got to experience many Azure services and their working and limitations, as they had to be properly gauged for the severity of failure. When exploring the Azure Resources, I got interested in Azure Functions and Logic apps. Rapid Circle provided me with resources to practice. Looking at my new-found interest, my mentor, Shrikant Datke, presented with a chance to update and create flows which was quite similar to Logic Apps for Monitoring team that we developed. This exposure to MS Flow and different services helped me understand variety of concepts around AzureAD, Graph API, SharePoint, Teams, Data Storage Services, Virtual Machine, KQL, PowerApps, Power Automate, ReactJs and PowerShell. 
 
Apart from technical aspects, most important part of the learning included communication with Clients and our Dutch team members. Having access to tickets, I got to experience what clients expects and how to reply to them in various scenarios. While creating App I made lot of mistakes, but Shrikant being a good mentor, patiently taught us the importance of resource gathering and thinking like a user. 

How were you introduced to Power Platform and C#? 
Seeing my efforts, Shrikant gave me and my colleagues tasks to maintain the Power Automate to fetch O365 alerts from Microsoft 365 Admin Centre. That gave us idea to automate almost all redundant processes like creating tickets in TOPdesk for Alerts coming from RMM tool and Azure Alert. He pushed me to learn Power Automate, APIs to create Flow to fetch Intune devices using Graph API so it would reduce our efforts in creating Service Reports. We used to receive fun challenges that gave good lessons on SharePoint and its application. 

How did you move from support role to full-time development role? 
Shrikant was aware of my interest and experience in PowerApp, Logic App, and Power Automate. He referred me to another team, where I spent one month completing the tasks given to me to prove my capabilities. I was glad to have met their expectations. Rapid Circle quickly found my replacement in RUN team and I started my new role as Cloud Consultant. 

What do you do in this team? What are you responsible for? 
Initially with my knowledge in Power Automate, Power App and Graph APIs, I picked tasks that were related to Logic Apps and gradually picked up tasks based on Deployment Scripts.  Now I maintain and build the logical components to meet the client requirements. The solution uses different services Like Logic App, Runbooks, SharePoint, PowerApp and they are all interdependent. Based on the requirement I have been giving inputs in SharePoint, Runbooks, Logic App and reflecting all this in deployment script using PowerShell. 

What does this transition mean to you? 
My journey from a Support Engineer to Cloud Consultant has been extraordinary. In 24/7 Monitoring team, my shifts used to change periodically from morning to evening to night. Though it challenged me to set a proper timetable, it did not deter me from my main goal.  
I am very fortunate to have been surrounded by great teammates, right from the day of joining the RC. This new role brings me opportunity to understand ARM Template, Deploying the Azure/SharePoint Resources using PowerShell and DevOps. 

What are the broader lessons you have learnt during this journey? 
That we should be flexible in our choices. If you put your focus and efforts in right direction, you can convert any challenge as an opportunity. If we grab the opportunity we are presented, we may get overwhelmed at the beginning, but with little yet consistent efforts, we would definitely be inching towards success. 

Which technology you want to work on next and why? 
My focus is now to learn how to build CI/CD pipelines that helps automated deployment on code merges and also learning Azure Functions. These two goals align with the project that I am going to handle.